Friday, December 18, 2015

Anne Robbins and Roswell

In
the course of investigating many UFO cases, there are witnesses who come
forward to tell their stories. Depending on the nature of the story or the
investigator who hears it, that story might be added to the case file or might
be rejected. Anne Robbins, widow of T/SGT Ernest Robbins, told her story, or
rather her husband’s story after he died in January 2000. It related to Roswell
and had all the necessary elements including the late night telephone call, a
mysterious trip into the desert and a secret that was reluctantly shared.

The
story was told at the Odessa Meteor Crater Museum in 2003. She said that they,
meaning her and her husband, had been to a dinner party at the RAAF NCO Club
and didn’t get home until 10:30. They hadn’t yet gone to sleep when she said
that “everything outside had lit up like it was daylight… and we both assumed
that

Photocopy right by Kevin Randle.

it was probably helicopters from the base with searchlights on.”

It
wasn’t long before he received a telephone call ordering him out to the base.
She said that she assumed there had been a plane crash somewhere but she didn’t
know why they would call her husband. He was a sheet metal worker who repaired
airplanes and had no skills related to an aircraft recovery operation.

He
returned the next day in a wrinkled and wet uniform. He told her he had had to
undergo a decontamination. When she asked him more, he said that he might as
well tell her because it was going to be in the newspaper anyway. She said he
told her, “A UFO crashed outside of Roswell.”

She
pressed him for details. He said that the craft had looked like two saucers
pressed together and that along the top saucer there were oblong windows all around
it. There had been three passengers. Two had survived and one had been killed.

Looking out at one of the cluster of craters near Odessa, Texas. Photo copyright by Kevin Randle.

While
we overlook, for the moment, this original horrendous breach of security,
Robbins then made it worse. Several days later he took her out to the crash
site. All the debris was gone, as were the alien creatures, but there remained
a burned spot in a perfect circle that “was so black that it was shiny. No
normal fire could have made something like that.”

She
wanted to know what happened to the craft but her husband told her he couldn’t
tell her and to ask no more questions.

In
the years that followed he never said much about the crash. While in high
school, their son, Ronald, was writing a report on UFOs and asked about what
had happened in Roswell. It would have been interesting to know about what year
this was because anything much before 1980 wouldn’t contain much about Roswell.
How would the son know to ask about Roswell if no one was actually talking
about it?

According
to Robbins, Ronald kept asking questions until her husband finally took a piece
of paper and drew a “pear-shaped head with large black eyes.” He said that
their skin was brown and he had seen no nose and no mouth.

Reporters
attempted to reach Ronald but apparently failed. Anne Robbins said that it
didn’t matter because he wouldn’t talk to them anyway. They did talk to the
daughter who said, “All I remember was Dad was saying he was stationed in
Roswell and that a UFO crashed there.” That isn’t very helpful.

We,
of course, get the standard that the now long gone witness didn’t lie or
embellish his tales and that he wasn’t given to pranks. She said that, if
ordered to, he would not talk about matters he was told were secret… and yes, I
see the contradiction here.

Before
we get into that, let me address a few other issues, the first of which is that
this information is all second hand. We have nothing from the man himself and
were told that talking with his son would be useless. His daughter added
nothing to the conversation that couldn’t have been said by anyone in the
world. I will note that I am retired military and could tell family that a UFO
crashed there but all of that comes from other sources. I saw nothing myself.

If
I was going to chase footnotes, I could point out that the MUFON UFO Journal from May 2003, on page 3, carried an article
about Robbins. But it is clear from that article that the information came from
“Carlton Sowers” [sic], a reporter for the Dallas
Observer, who apparently talked to Robbins at the opening of the Odessa
Museum. The Dallas Observer seems to
be a newspaper aimed at entertainment, meaning what there is to do in the
Dallas/Fort Worth area rather than a paper filled with hard news. Everything
then, goes back to Stowers and Anne Robbins.

One
of the articles found on line at www.ufocasebook.com/roswell50years.html, provided
additional information. It leads back to Carlton Stowers. He wrote, “For
several nights, Roswell residents had reportedly seen a strange flying object
in the night sky. Though no one would know about it for 30 years, two
Franciscan Catholic nuns, working at the local St. Mary’s Hospital, even made
notations in their diaries that as some time after 11 p.m. on July 7, 1947,
they had seen a large flash in the night sky, assuming it to be a plane in
distress.”

We
all now know that story originated with an unreliable source and that the
existence of the diaries has not been confirmed though it seemed to have been
in the early 1990s. This is something that should be removed from the history
of the Roswell case and reduced to a footnote.

Stowers
mentioned Frank Kaufmann in the next paragraph describing him as a radar
operator. We all now know that Kaufmann had no role in this, other than the
introduction of false information and this is something else that should be
reduced to a footnote in the history of the case.

Stowers
followed this with the story of Jim Ragsdale who claimed to have seen bodies.
Something that Stowers didn’t know is that Ragsdale would eventually claim that
he walked down to the bodies to get a good look at them and would claim that
they had helmets made of gold. I can think of very few things that are more
useless than gold for helmets. Ragsdale’s
testimony has been exposed as the lie it was and this should also be reduced to
a footnote.

I
mentioned all this because I wanted something out there that would provide the
latest and best information about the case and these three items have been
exposed as fraudulent. And yes, these were my witnesses and my claim about the
diaries, but I really thought the diaries had been located and Walter Haut told
me that Frank Kaufmann was reliable and Haut provided the lead to Ragsdale.

Which,
of course, tells us nothing about Robbins’ tale of being called out to help in
the recovery operation. Here’s what bothers me about all this. Robbins is not
in the Yearbook, but remember Haut said 15 or 20% of those stationed at the
base were not in the Yearbook. I have found no other reference to him in the
proper time frame, which in all these sorts of cases is worrisome but rarely
fatal.

In
1947 there were no helicopters assigned to the base and helicopters, though
flying in that time frame, were more experimental than operational. The Atomic Blast, the base newspaper
made a big deal out of a helicopter visiting a few months after the UFO crash.

Robbins’
tale of the decontamination procedure doesn’t seem right to me, but then this
was 1947 and the procedures might have changed. However, it doesn’t seem right
that he went through the procedure and then had his clothes returned to him. It
would seem that he would have been issued new fatigues to reduce the
possibility of spreading the contamination once the other procedures were
complete, but I don’t know if that is accurate for the time.

I
do know that Sheriff George Wilcox’s deputies did claim to have found a large
burned area, but they said nothing about a craft and bodies, which would have
still been there, given the timing. The large blackened area of glass, which
would be an aftereffect of extreme heat probably would have been destroyed by
the Army because it would be physical evidence, if it existed.

And
there is a real problem with Robbins taking his wife to the scene. She, herself
said that he would keep this a secret if told to but seems to have spilled the
story to her within hours of his return home. Making it worse, he took her out
to the crash site, violating more orders. That seems to be a major contradiction
in what she said.

Robbins’
story doesn’t seem to have been picked up by any of the Roswell researchers. I
do mention it briefly in Roswell
Revisited, but give it only a couple of paragraphs with no real commentary
about it. Although I do have a file for Robbins, I have not used this anecdote
in any other book. Studying it carefully in today’s world with more evidence
and information available, it is just another second-hand story that provided
nothing new, but seems to have drawn on much of the information that had been
published in the past. Tom Carey and Don Schmitt did interview her, but the
story didn’t make it into their book.

This
is, then, another of those tales that falls into the footnote category which
means we need to acknowledge it but certainly not use it as any sort of
evidence for a UFO crash. There is too much wrong here and without the story
from a first-hand source, we are better off not mentioning it again.

7 comments:

You say at the end: "...we are better off not mentioning it again".I agree. But why mention it in the first place? Together with your earlier story abut June Kaba, you seem to be digging the ground from under your feet.

Is it conceivable that you, by any chance, are now dangerously close to being a Roswell skeptic?!

No, I think it more likely that Kevin prefers absolute confirmation of verifiable facts rather than speculative theories or stories that cannot be officially verified. That's not necessarily a bad thing but if taken to an extreme limits potential theories for explaining an event that itself has no factual evidence to support an alien explanation despite many people claiming it does and was an alien spaceship crash.

It is my understanding from various sources (including Dr. Randle) that Sheriff Wilcox's deputies went to Foster Ranch on Sunday July 6, 1947 and located the burned spot referenced herein. They did not find the spacecraft, because the main body of the craft was some thirty miles or so away -- north of Roswell and west of Highway 285 (yet still in Chaves County) -- but not on Foster Ranch (in Lincoln County). Therefore the craft would NOT have been where the deputies were sent to and instructed to look for it.

The deputies also apparently did not find the "Dee Proctor body site" (located on Foster Ranch) nor even the Foster Ranch debris field.

Since a black, burned circular spot was alleged to have been found somewhere near Roswell, as noted in this post, I'm also reminded of some stories that have circulated about another spot where supposedly a light bluish, somewhat "glassy" area was also located.

Kevin, do you know anything about this bluish spot, as to sources, and do you think this aspect of the overall Roswell incident as reported has much credibility or not?

Some UFO researchers seem to think this bluish spot being located and examined by the military at the time triggered a high-level military intelligence investigation for some time afterward, and I've always wondered about just how credible these related stories might have actually been. What's your opinion?